


The Angel's Share

by misslucyjane



Category: Vintner's Luck - Elizabeth Knox
Genre: Character Study, M/M, Other, Post-Canon, the angel's cut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-17
Updated: 2018-12-17
Packaged: 2019-09-16 13:13:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16954710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misslucyjane/pseuds/misslucyjane
Summary: Xas returns to Clos Jodeau, to indulge himself in remembering.Angel's share: the portion of a wine in an aging barrel that is lost to evaporation





	The Angel's Share

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bravofiftyone](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bravofiftyone/gifts).



> Thank you to my beta.

Once a generation or so, after enough time for them to forget my previous visit, I return to Clos Jodeau. Sometimes I use the name Jodeau myself, and let them believe I am some distant cousin; this time I give my old Irish name, Cayley, and let my French be tinted with a lilt. 

The clos and the vineyard continue to thrive. Like all post-war wine, there is a tinge of radiation to the new vintages, but this tinge is in everything -- corn, apples, grass, skin, hair. I can feel it pressing against my own skin sometimes, the weight of a split atom. 

Whenever I return, I expect to feel something for the Jodeaus who remain, more than a friendly disinterest. It has yet to happen. None of them resemble you. Surely, the sons are handsome and the daughters are beautiful; sometimes I catch a glimpse of the man I knew, in a smile here or a gesture there; but the ensuing generations have not recreated you.

It is a relief, to be honest. It gives me no reason to linger.

\-----

Tours of the clos do include the house. It has changed over the generations too, expanded, updated, with a new wing that is now over a century old, built for the purpose of hosting weddings and parties and the vineyard's business offices. I know my way around, still, and wander away after the tasting to the ridge. The family has replanted cherry trees, just two this time, young enough that they have yet to produce. I run a hand over a slim trunk, letting the bark catch on my palm.

I could visit you in the churchyard, I suppose, but I feel closer to you here. It is only your body in the churchyard. This is our place, where we met, where we parted. Even more than the carriage house, even more than the room where Niall Cayley slept, this is where I feel you most.

I lower myself to the grass beneath the cherry tree and sit with my back resting against the trunk. I say, "I'm all right, Sobran. I raised a daughter. Sometimes men and women fancy themselves in love with me. I make friends, I find kindred souls."

Ironic, that expression. The soul in a body is so different from a soul in the afterlife, wherever they are sent. No matter, if you were here you would know what I mean.

\-----

Clos Vully has a guest house; there, I reserved a room I do not intend to use. It, too, has changed with the years; the carriage house is now a garage, the gallery above removed to better house the large vehicles of modern times. A pity, that. I would have liked to walk the gallery again, and relive the memory of the blizzard. There are worse memories, of course, but these are vague even for me, aside from when I hid my shame against the wall and mourned my lost power of flight. 

I am asked, sometimes, what the scars on my back mean. I told only my daughter the truth; she deserved it. She keeps my secrets well, even now when her mind wanders and sometimes she forgets her children and calls her grandchildren by the wrong names. But generally I keep the story simple, and say it was the result of an accident, surgery to repair broken bones. Fortunately I have been with no one with enough medical knowledge to see through the lie. 

You kissed the scars on my back. No matter how deeply I dozed, I remember this. The soft brush of lips against sensitive tissue, the only thing that truly made me forget the pain. 

\----

 _I think you're going to regret this,_ God told me the first night, but despite everything, I have yet to. Regret is for those whose days will end. I miss you, but cannot regret you. 

\----

What I mourn, too, are the days we were apart, when you feared me, when I was too angry and ashamed to be with you as lover or friend. I loved you for a lifetime but only acted upon it for a handful of days. 

That may be why I make this pilgrimage, returning to the clos every ten or twenty midsummers. Our day. Our night. I sit on our ridge and watch the slopes of vines, the grapes robust and sweet. I amble through the public rooms of the house and gaze at the portraits. There are none of you, but there is one of Baptiste as a middle-aged man, and his face is so like yours that I can almost convince myself it's like beholding you again.

When the morning comes and I have spent my night by the cherry trees, I will leave without a word to anyone. There is nothing to say to your descendants; they don't know our story. I'll return in a generation or two, and say goodbye to you once more.

You said, as you were dying, that we would see each other again on the day of days. You may be correct, but that day will come as a thief in the night and I don't know how much longer I will have to wait. And even if it happens and the world is swept clean, who knows what will happen to me. Will we be allowed to reunite? Will you know me when you see me, or will your eyes pass over me without recognition? Or worse, will you know me and feel no affection for the angel you once loved more than your own life?

\----

Sobran, Sobran. I say your name like a prayer. I want no other intermediaries, which makes you my saint, my hope of intercession, my love that moves the stars. Sobran, Sobran. All human pleasure, all divine love, all blending of the two that makes my heart throb for you even after a century and a half of your absence. Sobran, Sobran. Every memory is sweet, even the ones that hurt, even the moments of loneliness and rejection, because they were with you. Sobran, Sobran. 

\----

I think of all of these things rarely, despite my unfailing memory. Missing you is an unending ache like the phantom wings behind my back. But once a generation I loll in the indulgence of remembering you, remembering your fingertips and lips, remembering the humanity of you, remembering how your touch alone allowed me to soar.


End file.
